Load balancing plays a crucial role in network management by distributing incoming network traffic across multiple servers or resources. This process ensures no single server becomes overwhelmed, maintaining optimal performance and reliability. Load balancing enhances application availability by minimizing downtime and reducing response times. It also helps to make efficient use of resources, allowing organizations to scale applications easily as demand fluctuates. Furthermore, it provides redundancy, ensuring that if one server fails, others can seamlessly take over, thereby improving overall system fault tolerance.